First, your tattoo will have some irritation around it. After you remove your bandaging after the allotted amount of time recommended by your artist has passed, your skin around the tattoo may be red. It may also be secreting a fluid, or ink may be dripping off of it.
Signs of Potential Problems: Excessive Redness: If the redness spreads beyond the tattoo or lasts longer than a few days. Severe Swelling: If swelling is significant and does not improve. Pus or Oozing: Any yellow or green discharge could indicate infection. Foul Odor: An unusual smell can be a sign of infection.
Tattoo Aftercare Don'ts:
It's crucial not to pick, scratch, or peel them off, as this can pull out the ink and also lead to scarring or colour loss. Avoid Soaking: For the first few weeks, avoid prolonged exposure to water, such as swimming or soaking in hot tubs. Quick showers are preferable to long baths.
Don't remove the bandages until the proper amount of time has passed as advised by your tattoo artist. You should also avoid sunlight, this can ruin the quality of the art. You must also keep your new tattoo area clean. Avoid going to places like gyms, and pools.
When an infection develops after a tattoo, it goes through various stages. While these stages aren't medically defined, they can help you get a better sense of how the infection will progress over time. Stage 1: A dull pain and tenderness in the area develops. Stage 2: Swelling, warmth, and redness occurs.
Wonky lines are a big indicator of an unskilled artist. How a tattoo heals is a huge sign of a good tattoo vs a bad tattoo. If a tattoo scars, blows out or straight up falls out of the skin, it's a bad tattoo.
Use the Aquaphor for the first 2-3 days then switch to a regular FRAGRANCE-FREE lotion such as Lubriderm, or any other fragrance-free brand. 5. Fresh tattoos sometimes “weep” during the first couple of days, meaning that plasma and ink form a thin moist coating on the skin. This can be DABBED with a clean paper towel.
Most of the redness and swelling will be gone, but the area will still be very tender to the touch. Your tattoo may also develop a thick, clear layer similar to a callus. This layer is a scab. It shouldn't have any visible brownish or blackish scabs, and it shouldn't have a crusty texture.
Picking or Scratching Itchy or Peeling Skin
Itchy and scabby skin can be annoying during the healing stages. But remember, don't pick or scratch it! This can potentially damage the color and lines of your new tattoo.
In addition to excessive pain, bleeding, and scabbing, a tattoo that is too deep may also have a blurred or distorted appearance. When the needle goes too deep, it can cause the ink to spread beyond the intended area, leading to a smudged or blurry appearance.
Signs of a tattoo infection may appear across the entire tattoo or only within specific colors. They can include: Bumps on your skin (papules) that sometimes contain pus (pustules). Nodules, bumps on or below your skin that are larger than papules.
If your tattoo is INFECTED things will look different than when it's irritated. You might still see some redness, swelling, and soreness, but look at the extended area away from the tattoo to investigate for drainage of fluid or pus, severe redness, excessive swelling, and tenderness.
Days 4 to 6:
The redness should start to fade, and light new skin will be noticeable over the tattoo.
Persistent redness: Skin shouldn't stay red for weeks or start to darken or spread. Green or yellow fluid: Pus oozing from your tattoo is a sign of infection. Persistent swollen skin: Skin on or around the tattoo shouldn't look puffy for weeks, which indicates an allergy to tattoo ink.
The reaction usually appears as an inflamed red rash or may sometimes be scaly and flaky (exfoliative dermatitis). Red tattoo pigments cause the most reactions, particularly those made from mercury sulfide (cinnabar).
Many people experience a slight inflammation, but if symptoms persist, a person should see their doctor. Antibiotic treatment can usually resolve a tattoo related infection. Without treatment, complications of a skin infection, such as a deeper infection, and, rarely, sepsis may occur in some people.
It's typically caused when a tattoo artist presses too aggressively into the skin, deposits ink at the wrong angle, or overworks the skin, which occurs more often with a less-experienced tattoo artist but can happen with any artist.
Aftercare & Aging
Fine line tattoos are applied with less ink. While the ink is still embedded in the second layer of skin, the single needle does not penetrate as deeply or deposit as much ink. As a result, it is common for fine line tattoos to fade with age.